“Core coalition” to deal with ISIS problem

US President Obama calls upon nine allied forces to deal the escalating ISIS problem. The Sunni group of militants that is an offspring of conflicts in the Middle East has taken much control in the regions of Syria and Iraq, targeting international people on the land.
Obama has been under enormous pressure to articulate a way to counter ISIS, which has proclaimed itself an Islamic caliphate that knows no borders and has demonstrated ruthless behavior, including the videotaped beheadings of two Americans.
“You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities, you narrow their scope of action, you slowly shrink the space, the territory that they may control, you take out their leadership,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “And over time, they are not able to conduct the same kinds of terrorist attacks as they once could.”
He said that “we are going to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL, the same way that we have gone after Al Qaeda,”
Diplomats and defense officials from the United States, Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark huddled to devise a two-pronged strategy: strengthening allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria, while bombing Sunni militants from the air.
Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, sought to define more clearly what destroying ISIS would actually mean on the ground.
“From a counterterrorism standpoint, understand that it doesn’t mean eradicating every single person aligned with the group,” Mr. Olsen said. “We need to be realistic about that.”
The situation is all the more critical as the attack against ISIS would help President Assad. American officials will face obstacles in strengthening the Free Syrian Army, the moderates of choice for the United States. “This is going to take months,” one Defense Department official added.